Yoono Interface

This morning when I started up firefox, I got an update to Yoono. If you haven't used yoono before it's a great little firefox plugin that allows you to manage a lot of your interactions with a large number of the popular social networks such as twitter, facebook, myspace, AIM, and a few others. After a little poking around the new interface I got a little frustrated because a few of my favorite features were not working the way I expected. So naturally I decided to post my displeasure on my twitter feed. I'm not sure why I was surprised, but I got a response from Yoono's support on twitter in a fairly short amount of time asking me what I was unhappy about.

While I'm not sure if I'm more sensitive then most to user interface issues, I'm certainly moe vocal then some. I think this comes from my background as a developer (web and other). This also means I understand how incredibly hard it is to get a really good interface to a program.

Let me say that any company that wants to succeed should follow the example of yoono. They are actively looking for feedback posted about their product and contacting users to see what they think. On top of that they are doing what some successful companies already know... negative feedback is not necessarily bad as long as you can look at the feedback as a way to better serve your users. I think many people don't really understand what that last statement really means.
My current issues with the yoono interface are as follows:

1. I can't find where to change any of my twitter account settings. At this point if I changed my password for twitter I'd have no clue where to change it in yoono. I'm sure it's just that I'm not looking in the right place, but if I can't find it, there's got to be plenty of other people that can't as well. Also, don't tell me to look at a user manual, this is the kind of thing that should not require reference material to change.


2. The @replies that other people post to me don't show up in my updates tab. Again, this might be a setting (that I can't find) or Yoono support said it might be a bug. Granted I can still see the @replies in my @ tab, but that's bit of a pain. One nice thing that they pointed out though is the "More" link allows you to see conversations. While not a replacement for my @replies in the update tab, I still like it


3. There used to be a way to "archive" the updates from my friends. I really liked this feature, since that meant I could clear my updates list and only see what was new. There is a mark as read feature, but that doesn't seem to do anything. I'm not sure if it's a bug or an error between chair and keyboard.

Like I said earlier I got a reply from Yoono's support and I hope they can either fix these bugs (if the are bugs), or add options to the program to let me use the program like I want to use it. Regardless, I'm still a faithful Yoono user and would just like to tell them to keep up the good work.

Mock Me A Website

Here's an idea for a product if anyone would care to make it. I'm frequently tasked with creating a new web based product. The problem is that using even a WYSIWYG editor is too slow for what I want when we're having brainstorming or general design sessions. What I need is a program that I could fire up and very quickly lay out the general flow and page design. Here's my wishlist:

1. I can zoom out to see the overall map of the site


2. I can zoom into a page and see the rough design of the page


3. I can draw a component on the page

I can make notes on the page

4. I can link a component to go to another page


5. From the zoomed out view I can move pages around


6. From the zoomed out view I can see the links between pages


7. I can edit the source of the HTML and when I preview the page the sketched page can be an overlay on top of the page so I can compare the "real" page with the "sketched" page

If this already exists then tell me where. I'd love to spend time and create this, but I know better then to think I can make the time for something like this.

linux + bamboo = still aweful handwriting

I just spent about an hour or so getting my new Wacom Bamboo "fun" working in linux. It took some time to get it to work properly because of one little tiny step in the How-To that I was following. As you can see though it works and my handwriting is still just as aweful when captured by a pen tablet as it is with a pen and paper.

Fun with SPAM

So I just got the following SPAM in my inbox and was thinking what would be a fun way to respond...

Your Email Have Won Reference Number: XXXXXXXX Claims of BMW SARLOON CAR AND £45,000.00 pounds has been won by you in our BMW STARTING OF YEAR PROMOTION 2009 .get back to this office with your Names ....Depends on who you are, some people call me honey, sweetie, dad, son, @$$hole, smartass, and many more
Address ....Mr. is usually good to start with
Country...Northrend
Phone No...+69-555-byteme
Occupation..Warlock
Sex..Age I'm married, so we'll just go with occasionaly. Do you want physical or mental age? What form or measurement are you using?

Best Regards
Mr Richard Gray.

How Monday should not start

WARNING! Following these five simple steps will start your day off on the wrong foot.

1. Woke up about 5 minutes before my alarm to my dog whining. This is unusual, but I figured that, like my 5 year old, maybe she didn't drain the tank before bed. So got up to let her out.

2. Just before I let her out, I heard one of those "good luck figuring out where this noise is coming from" beeps of what I assumed was a smoke alarm with a dying battery. So I let the dog out and started my hunt.

3. It only took me a few minutes to discover the location of the annoyance. It was a carbon monoxide detector in the stairwell leading to the basement. Thankfully in reach and we had batteries.

4. As I'm putting the detector back on the wall I hear the dog outside (at 5:30am) barking because I left her out for more then what she felt was appropriate in the brutal cold. So I sprint for the door, let her in and put her back in her crate.

5. As I'm headed back upstairs I begin to wonder how long this whole thing took because my alarm goes off at 5:30 and my wife was still sleeping. Sure enough I make it back to bed as my wife is trying to find the right button to turn off the alarm.

So needless to say not a great start, however, I'm determined to not let it affect the rest of my Monday.

Interesting Music Video

BLIND

For anyone out there that like machinima, this WoW video is pretty well done.
The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.